


Falling in Love with Jesse McCree

by Sojmilk



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Hurt, M/M, Pining Hanzo, Sad Ending, Shimada Brothers, not shima/da/cest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-29
Updated: 2017-05-29
Packaged: 2018-11-06 08:33:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11032509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sojmilk/pseuds/Sojmilk
Summary: Hanzo is wary of Jesse McCree at first, but over time, wants nothing more than to be close to him.





	Falling in Love with Jesse McCree

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rainbowfootsteps](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rainbowfootsteps/gifts).



> uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhhh writing this made me cry  
> rainbowfootsteps came up with the basis for this

Hanzo was wary of Jesse McCree at first – he was wary of all the members of Overwatch, and for the first few weeks at Watchpoint: Giblratar, he followed Genji like a shadow. The cold looks thrown his way did not go unnoticed, and he accepted them. They were, after all, Genji's friends, and he had tried to murder his brother.

Over time, though, he felt the stares soften. He was painfully aware that he had done nothing to earn the forgiveness of any of them, and yet they seemed determined to be kind. A smile in the corridor, his name thrown into conversation (“Hanzo and Genji worked great together today”,) compliments that he would never have expected back in Japan, much less from a motley group of close-knit friends who he'd been nothing but a nuisance to.

 

Jesse McCree was the exception. He was not outright rude or unkind (both things, Hanzo reminded himself, nothing short of what he deserved,) but he avoided eye contact – any kind of contact, for that matter – and he never seemed to smile when Hanzo was around. At first, Hanzo wasn't sure he ever _did_ smile, but on one of the rare occasions he ventured around the watchpoint without Genji, he passed the open door of the lounge, and spotted Jesse and Fareeha inside, laughing at a video on Fareeha's phone. Hanzo knew this was a moment he shouldn't linger on, not his to enjoy, but he hesitated before moving away. That night was sleepless, as so many were, but he couldn't focus on the mantras Genji had recommended he repeat. They were replaced by the memory of Jesse McCree in the golden afternoon light, rough face softened by a smile, his eyes creased at the corners.

It was foolish, he knew, but the next morning, it was a shock to see the normal stony look on McCree's face as he entered the mess hall. Not just a shock, a disappointment, cold in his chest.

 

Genji noticed he was picking at his food. “ _Daijobuka, anija_?”

Hanzo appreciated the question being in Japanese. Lena was sitting on his right, and he didn't want to explain his feelings to her. Not that he would be explaining them to Genji either – he grunted that he was fine, pushed his chair back, and left the room.

 

He stalked to the practice range. “Athena, could you set up some training bots please?”

He shot at them for hours, taking breaks only to hydrate himself before getting back to it. By lunchtime, his fingers were aching, new calluses forming over the old ones.

Athena's voice spoke over the intercom. “Agent Shimada, the others are in the mess hall. Your brother is looking for you. Do you wish me to tell him where you are?”

Hanzo sighed, runnng his hand through his sweaty hair, re-tying it with the golden ribbon that had slipped out. “Let him know I will be there soon. I need to take a shower.”

“I will do so.”

 

 

*

 

That was only the beginning. Hanzo found himself drawn to the gunslinger, noticing small quirks and habits; the way he twirled Peacekeeper absent-mindedly while waiting for his turn at the practice range, how he stood perfectly still to take aim, his hands steady. How, when he was relaxed in the lounge, a small smile – not the wide beam Hanzo had been lucky enough to witness all those weeks ago, but a smile nonetheless – would play across his lips. How the cigarillos that he smoked outside were sweet and strong, how he'd smoke them only halfway. Hanzo had gathered the courage to ask him why, one day, when they were both sitting outside.

“Gotta keep Angela happy somehow. If I only smoke 'em halfway, that's only half as bad as if I smoke the whole thing.”

“Does that really satisfy Doctor Ziegler?” Hanzo asked, bewildered. McCree shook his head and said no more.

Hanzo longed to coax a smile from him, but he was afraid to annoy him. He quietly went back inside, and didn't go to the mess hall for dinner. He knew it was irrational, pointless, hiding away when nothing had happened, but there was a feeling inside him that he couldn't get rid of. He was afraid to look McCree in the eye, or to look at him at all, but knew that, in a room with a thousand other people, he would have eyes only for him.

 

*

 

Genji confronted him, finally, after Hanzo had nearly been killed during a mission.

“What the hell's gotten into you, Hanzo?” He spoke in hushed Japanese in the medical ward, back at Gibraltar, once Hanzo had regained consciousness. “You never flub shots. You never lose concentration. Is something wrong?”

Hanzo shook his head slowly, painfully. “No,” he began. “Yes,” he conceded.

He told Genji how the feeling in his chest grew when McCree was close, how seeing him smile caused him to stop in his tracks. How the bullet streaking across the sky to hit him in the shoulder had gone unnoticed because McCree was looking at him.

“Jesus Christ. You're in love.”

Hanzo spluttered, coughed, and Doctor Ziegler rushed over to check his vitals. “Genji, _don't_ kill your brother, _please_ ,” she sounded stressed. Genji nodded. “Sorry, Angela,” he said. To Hanzo, he smirked, “I'll be back later. Get better,” and he was gone.

 

*

 

Hanzo drifted in and out of consciousness for a day or two; the bulletwound was healed quickly, but Angela wanted to keep him in anyway, and monitor his recovery. Hanzo hated being cooped up, hated the way the floor squeaked beneath Doctor Ziegler's feet, how _tired_ he felt. When he was finally allowed to go back to his bunk, to eat in the mess hall with the others, he found himself smiling, laughing, allowing himself to be dragged into conversation, making jokes. He'd missed being around his fellow members without even realising it. One night, McCree laughed at one of his jokes, kindling a warm feeling in Hanzo's chest. He smiled at McCree, and when the gesture was returned, the warm feeling grew. That night resulted in the most fulfilling sleep he'd had in a long time. He woke feeling light.

 

Genji's words cycled in his head throughout the day, throughout the week, the month, the year. _You're in love. You're in love. You're in_ love _._

Hanzo knew that it was true, knew that the way he felt couldn't be credited to anything other than love – except maybe severe illness or allergy to cowboys, but he'd recently spent three days under care of a talented medic who'd deemed him perfectly healthy, save the bullet wound.

There wasn't much he could do about it, of course. He was certain that McCree didn't reciprocate his feelings, and didn't want to push anything. Their new friendship had barely begun, and if he could, Hanzo wanted to make it last.

 

As time passed, the urge to let his feelings pour out became stronger. Genji encouraged this; he was tired of Hanzo coming to him to mope.

He was given a thousand perfect opportunities. Sitting under the stars on the balcony, cigarillo smoke in the air. At the training range, sweat on both their foreheads, laughing, trying to outshoot one another. On missions, during the long rides in aircrafts, exhausted, leaning on each other, dozing. The moments passed Hanzo by, and he let them slip through his fingers, the words on his tongue, but with no courage to voice them.

 

Hanzo was pulled from his sleep one night – or was it morning? - by the sounds of voices yelling, feet running, a haunting cry that sounded worryingly like Fareeha's. He pulled his kyudo-gi around him before stumbling from his room, hair in his eyes.

The light was on in the medical ward. He leaned in through the doorway.

“Oh god, no,” he choked, and Fareeha, at Jesse's bedside, turned to him. She didn't speak, but her eyes told him what he needed to know.

He was parylised with shock, his heart pounding, tears slipping from his eyes and running down his face. He tried to speak, but his throat was dry. Fareeha pushed herself up, and walked towards him.

“I...I can't stay with him. I can't-” she heaved a sob. “-I can't do it. You can s-sit, if you want.” She turned and fled.

The squeak of shoes on the medbay floor told him Angela was near, his vision obscured with tears. She put a hand on his shoulder. “There was nothing I could do. He was gone by the time they brought him to me. You can have as long as you need, but I expect the others will need some time with him once they know.”

Hanzo nodded, numb, and waited for the squeaking to retreat.

 

“Jesse,” he said. As if he could hear. As if he were alive. Hanzo moved to the seat by him, took his hand. It was still warm. Hanzo swallowed, hard. “This is not what I imagined when I imagined telling you that I – that I love you.”

There was only silence. Jesse was dead. He was confessing his love to a corpse.

“I think I loved you since I saw you laughing with Fareeha. Y-you lit something in me, Jesse, and you have been with me since.” He lowered his head to touch his lips to Jesse's knuckles, but a sob wracked his body halfway down and he leaned against the bed. “I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I n-never wanted this for you. God, Jesse. I wish I'd told you. I'm sorry.”

A hand touched his back. Genji's.

“I am sorry, Hanzo.”

Hanzo nodded. His tears were dampening the fabric of Jesse's shirt. Not that it mattered. “I am sorry too. He was your friend.”

A gasp from Genji told him that his brother, too, was breaking down. Hanzo stood, and pulled Genji to him in a fierce embrace, and they held each other while they cried.

“I never got to tell him, Genji. I never told him.”

“But he knew.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> ;u;  
> “Daijobuka, anija?” means "Are you ok, brother?"  
> EDIT: I just read this back having written it a few months ago and. It made me cry. Hope you enjoyed it.


End file.
